You will be shocked to learn that Woody Allen liked young, attractive women.
I’m not talking about the Dylan Farrow issue, by the way. In my opinion, the allegations of child abuse related to Farrow deserve considerable skepticism, and the fact that the adult Dylan now insists the allegations are true are likely the product of memories that were created and manipulated by her mother, Mia Farrow, in her rage at Allen. (Dylan’s brother, Moses, recently published an essay contesting the allegations as well. The family is split.)
And you can be as circumspect as you want about Farrow’s motivations but one of them appears to be the loss of her career as a star in Woody Allen’s films. Isn’t it ironic?
A rather thorough investigation conducted by the authorities at the time came to the conclusion that Dylan’s account varied from telling to telling and was too inconsistent to sustain even a single charge. There is a suspicions that she was manipulated by Mia, who, obviously, had a motive.
There is indisputable evidence, in the form of a written note in the possession of Woody and in Mia’s handwriting, that Mia Farrow constructed the charge of abuse before the date on which she alleges the abuse occurred. Think about that. She does not claim any abuse occurred before the note was written. She writes the note, posts it on the door at a birthday party, and then, much later, claims there is an actual incident.
Unsurprisingly, we are now getting a lot of blurred lines. In the middle of arguments about how Weinstein got away with it, we transition to Al Franken– how did he get away with it– as if his offenses were of the same level of magnitude.
So the author (linked above) ravishes Woody Allen’s history looking for evidence that he (gulp!) was sexually attracted to women. Incredibly, Allen has been getting away with being sexually attracted to women for years! With impunity! In movie after movie, he is depicted as having a romantic interest in a young, attractive woman. It’s repulsive! Why is this even allowed?
The discussion sometimes takes absurd turns. From the New York Times:
Online and in interviews, many people said they were appalled by what they saw as Mr. Baldwin’s belligerence toward Ms. Farrow and his wading into circumstances about which he has no firsthand knowledge.
No firsthand knowledge? So said one of the millions who got all their information from an emotional television interview, now condemning Alec Baldwin for defending Woody Allen.
And nobody is going to discuss this angle: Dylan Farrow has set out on an angry campaign to destroy Woody Allen’s career and reputation. Why? The stock answer in these situations is almost always “so nobody else ever has to go through what I went through”, but that is ridiculously inapplicable here. Allen is 80 years old and married, controversially, of course, to the adopted step-sibling of Dylan. (Mia Farrow, at 21, married 52-year-old Frank Sinatra. Take that! Then she began an affair with Andre Previn– who was married at the time– which caused his wife, Dory, a nervous breakdown leading to institutionalization. Bam! Pow! Dory eventually recovered and released an album including a song “Beware of Young Girls” that is likely a reference to Farrow! ) Allen’s marriage to Soon Ye may be distasteful to some, but it’s not illegal, and not even conventionally unethical: he was not her adoptive father though many repeat this myth in condemning him. So what drives Dylan?
Is it really admirable in any way that she is whining about people still liking her father? Dylan is a young woman of no discernible achievement and her only claim to fame– her value as a talk-show guest or interviewee– are her scabrous attacks on a man famous for producing one great film after another during a very long and successful career. She seems, in some ways, to be jealous. Why am I not more loved than my father? He’s the bad person, because he was not nice to me. If you are not nice to me, you are a bad person.
Incidentally, where is all the disgust for Leonard Cohen? Cohen, unlike Allen, was unambiguously well-liked. Yet his behavior, as clearly recounted in his own words, was not much less disgusting, if at all. Over and over again, in song, he expresses a passionate longing for sexual consummation with women with beautiful bodies. “I sang my songs\I told my lies\to lie between your matchless thighs”. He exposes Janis Joplin “giving me head on the unmade bed”. He talks about the “joint of her thighs”. He wants to “come up to you from behind”. He celebrates “all the fifteen year old girls I wanted when I was fifteen”.
He must be evicted from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame for these grievous offences! But Cohen was a master at ingratiating himself with his potential accusers: they would instantly forgive him, because, in that weird sauce of intermingled celebrity and projection, he was nice to them. All is forgiven.
People: grow up.
[whohit]Woody Allen and the Farrow Clan[/whohit]